prove
entirely ungrateful. We have enjoyed your stay here, and shall be most
sorry to have you go. I should be glad to think you would honor us with
your company to dinner not less often than once each week."

For the first time a ray of light came into his face.

"Oh, may I?" he cried. "Then I shall not be shut off entirely from
seeing you?"

"No, indeed," she answered. "Father likes you and Mr. Weil too well--you
will bring him, of course. Once a week, at least--if it were twice it
wouldn't do any harm; and if it were three times--"

His face was now one bright beam of light.

"Daisy," he cried. "I believe you do not hate me after all!"

"I hope you never thought I did," she responded. "Why is it that a man
can see no middle ground between positive dislike and marriage? I expect
to like a good many men in the course of my life, but I can only marry a
very few of them."

He was obliged to laugh at this, and to say that she would only marry
_one_, if he had _his_ way. Before they had finished with this subject
Roseleaf was in a state of high good nature, though he had little
apparently upon which to base the rise in his spirits.

"Can't I say something--just a hint, if no more, to your father?" he
asked, getting down again to business.

"Pretty risky!" she answered, sententiously. "He wouldn't give you much
encouragement I fear."

The young man caught eagerly at the word.

"You _fear_!" he echoed. "God bless you, Daisy!"

Bearing in mind what she had previously said about the unlocked doors,
he did not attempt to suit the action to the phrase. But his happy face
spoke volumes.

"You had best say very little to father at present," said Daisy,
soberly. "He is most unhappy."

"I wish I knew what troubled him!" he exclaimed.

"I wish so, too, if you could aid him," she answered, earnestly.

"Who knows but I may?" he asked, with a smile that she hoped would prove
prophetic.

CHAPTER XI.

ARCHIE PAYS ATTENTION.

Roseleaf took rooms at his old lodgings in the city, and set in earnest
about the work of beginning his great novel. He had interviews with Mr.
Gouger, at which he detailed the slight thread of plot which he already
had in mind, profiting by the critic's shrewd suggestions. It was
decided that he should portray, at the beginning, a youth much like
himself, who was to fall in love with an angelically pure maiden. The
outline of their respective characters were to be sketched with care,